In many German churches there are
circular mediaeval wall tablets, depicting a coat of arms with a
memorial inscription; they are real church monuments, not funeral
paraphernalia like English hatchments. They were often set up in
conjunction with a floor slab, and are usually called Epitaphien,
“memorials above the tomb”. These two examples were salvaged from the
ruins of Königsberg Cathedral, which was burnt out in 1945, and remained
exposed to the elements for sixty years before being restored; they are
now displayed in the museum rooms in the south tower. Each one shows a
shield of arms, with helmet and crest, and very elaborately carved
mantling. The work is delicately done, in lime or some such
close-grained wood, and although they are broken, and the backing boards
mostly lost, they do not appear to have suffered from fire or water.

The first one is to Gesueren von ---, 1520; the shield
bears a wheel, the crest is missing; it is set on a replacement circular
board with an incised inscription in Fraktur, Anno Domini 1520 Am Tag
Diese Math --- --- Gesueren Von --- --- den Gott Gnad --- Des
Hochlaystelzen Ritterließen ---.

The second, to --- von Wilma,
1520, has both shield and crest of a boar’s head, set on a
replacement circular board (except for the top dexter area which is
original), with an incised inscription in Fraktur: Anno 20 Ist der Erbar und ser
Rath und Lieberhet Von Wilma in Verbunden. The inscriptions were
presumably copied from a pre-war source, the Gesueren one already
damaged or illegible in parts.

These are the beginning of a tradition which was to
flourish in the early modern period, as ever larger and more and more
elaborate Epitaphien appeared all over the walls of many Baltic
churches, some with painted figures of the family of the deceased
kneeling in rows. They continued to be made into the nineteenth
century, the inscriptions nearly always in German, though there is one
in Russian in the Castle Museum in Rīga. These two are all that remain
of many that were once in Königsberg, to judge by old photographs. But
Königsberg, which was once the capital of Prussia, was very severely
damaged in the second world war, and the population of the entire
province was exterminated. It was resettled with Russians, and renamed
Kaliningrad for no better reason than that Marshal Kalinin happened to
die just as they were debating what to call the new city. For decades
it was a closed city, being an important strategic base, but now left
behind as a tidal pool of history, inhabited only by rather melancholy
displaced Russians. For their regular worship the people throng to the
new Orthodox churches, and they have no use for a Gothic Lutheran
cathedral, but the building is re-roofed and restored as a concert hall,
with tiny Orthodox and Lutheran chapels in the bases of the towers.
While they are obviously concerned about the remaining artefacts from
the Cathedral, including its church monuments, it is rather too late to
salvage more than fragments such as these.